Medicine - What Comes After "Oops!"
Does Blue Cross cover stupid?
Flu For Two
Well, it's another Autumn here in Michigan. Tigers fans are trying to get excited about watching the Yankees and the Phillies in the World Series; hunters are polishing their bullets and stockpiling Slim Jims in anticipation of Opening Day; soggy maple leaves are clogging up all the rain gutters; otherwise sane and rational mothers are wiggling into Sexy Firefighter, Sexy Pirate, or Sexy Investment Banker costumes for the neighborhood Halloween party; and the annual pitched battle over who is going to eat Thanksgiving dinner where and with whom is about to get underway.
Oh yeah, and the Flu is here.
Oh, My Aching Back
My back hurts.
It's not the first time. Over the years I've performed unplanned high speed front flips into the water while I was riding the Air Chair behind the ski boat. I've thrown my body at linebackers the size of an SUV - a real SUV, not one of those silly little Japanese jobbies that probably wouldn't make it across the Baja hauling more than about 250 grocery bags full of Wonder Bread and Spaghetti-Os. I've gripped my hockey stick with cheerful determination and skated headfirst into opposing players who were bigger, stronger, and more talented than I was - and who saw me coming.
My Physical Therapist has a chair in the waiting room with my name on it.
A Night In The Chest Pain Unit
Beep, beep, beep.
You wake up from a light, fitful sleep at 3 AM to the sounds of your heart monitor beeping and the semi-hushed voices of two nurses outside your room discussing household indiscretions of their husbands and kids. The I.V. stuck in the back of your hand keeps you from rolling onto your side to get comfortable. Your hospital gown is wadded and twisted around your various body parts in strange and awful ways.
And then it gets worse. You hear a weird change in the sounds coming from that heart monitor, and you try not to imagine what could be going wrong inside your chest to make those changes.
But the voices of the nurses who are keeping track of your monitor don't even break stride, and after a while you decide that the changes you heard were all in your imagination. Besides, you're so exhausted that at that point you no longer care, and so you doze back into that light, fitful sleep.
Beep, beep, beep.
